The Shadow Files · Episode Five

Who Controls the CFA Franc? Cameroon, France and Monetary Sovereignty

I spend this currency every day. A question about the cash in my pocket turned into an investigation of the institutions behind it: the Central African CFA franc, the bank that issues it, the French Treasury Operations Account tied to the guarantee — and the difference between what is documented, what is contested, and what is simply repeated.

Joshua T. Berglan · The World’s Mayor · Reporting from Cameroon
Published 21 September 2026 · Research checked 22 September 2026 · About 37 minutes to read · 26 minutes to watch

Who controls the CFA franc in Cameroon?

En français : l’essentiel

Cette enquête porte sur un système monétaire francophone. Les points essentiels sont résumés ici en français; l'article complet continue en anglais.

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The Shadow Files #5 — The Currency After Colonialism File
Hosted by Joshua T. Berglan, The World’s Mayor · Investigative documentary · 26 minutes
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Previous Shadow Files investigations

New to the series? Start anywhere. These are the four investigations that came before The Currency After Colonialism File.

• Episode 04 The Nkrumah File — Ghana's 1966 Coup

  Declassified records, foreign pressure, covert propaganda and the limits of what the released evidence can prove.

• Episode 03 The Lumumba File — The CIA Plot That Failed

  The documentary record surrounding Patrice Lumumba, the Congo crisis and the covert actions directed against him.

• Episode 02 The Cameroon Gold Gap — 22.3 kg Out, 15.2 Tonnes Abroad

  An evidence-led investigation into the gap between Cameroon's reported gold exports and foreign import records.

• Episode 01 The $289M Cameroon Timber Gap

  The first Shadow Files investigation, following discrepancies in Cameroon's timber trade data.

The money in my pocket

Every day in Cameroon, I spend CFA francs. Actual cash: food, transportation, the ordinary transactions that make a life. Eventually, I wanted to understand the decisions behind the notes in my hand.

The question sounds simple: who controls this money? But control can mean issuing notes, setting interest rates, deciding an exchange rate, managing reserves or determining who can borrow. Those powers do not all sit in the same place.

This file follows the Central African CFA franc through that division of authority. My concern is practical: what does the arrangement make possible, what does it restrict, and what would a credible alternative require? I am pro-Africa, pro-Cameroon and pro-truth. That includes testing claims I might otherwise want to believe.

The responsibilities behind the banknote

The useful question is therefore specific: which institution has which power, under which rules?

What is documented, and what is not

The CFA franc debate runs hot in both directions. This ledger separates primary-source facts from claims the evidence does not carry.

Claims about the Central African CFA franc and their evidentiary status, checked 22 September 2026

What did independence change?

The CFA franc was created on 26 December 1945 under French colonial administration. Its original name referred explicitly to France’s African colonies. That origin is part of the record, not an allegation. The later euro conversion established the familiar parity of 655.957 CFA francs per euro.

Institutional change also belongs in the record. BEAC’s headquarters moved from Paris to Yaoundé in 1977. An African regional central bank is not interchangeable with a colonial issuing office. Yet the monetary relationship with France continued through negotiated agreements — the France–BEAC monetary-cooperation convention of November 1972, whose second article states the cooperation rests on “ la garantie illimitée donnée par la France à la monnaie émise par la Banque ” and on the deposit with the French Treasury of all or part of the member states’ foreign-exchange reserves.

My reading is that independence changed the institutions without erasing every external monetary connection. Whether the surviving arrangements serve present needs is a question for evidence and public choice, rather than an answer settled by either a flag or a slogan.

What does France’s seat at the table mean?

BEAC publishes its own governance. Its Board of Directors has fourteen members: two administrators for each of the six member states, plus two for France. Its Monetary Policy Committee (CPM) has fourteen deliberating members besides the chair: two per member state and two for France. The Collège des Censeurs , an oversight body distinct from the Audit Committee, has three members, one designated by France.

Those positions establish formal French participation. They do not establish sole French control. BEAC's current CPM page says each voting member has one vote, decisions are taken by a simple majority of members present, and the chair votes only to break a tie.

There is another important nuance: BEAC also states that CPM members do not represent the states of which they are nationals and may not seek or receive instructions from states, Community institutions or any other person. That means the two positions allocated to France are real institutional participation, but the published rules do not support describing every vote by those members as an instruction from Paris.

The distinction matters throughout this investigation: appointment structure, voting rules and proof of actual control are three different questions.

Does France take 50% of Cameroon’s money?

The viral “France takes 50% of Cameroon’s money” claim is inaccurate as stated. The rule concerns pooled central-bank foreign assets, not half of Cameroon's wages, taxes, GDP, bank deposits or national budget.

The detailed rule is also more precise than the common shorthand. BEAC's 2025 special audit reproduces the 2014 convention: the standard mandatory quota is 50% of BEAC's net foreign assets, after specified exclusions. The convention permits the quota to be reduced below 50% but not below 40%. Assets held above the mandatory threshold at the French Treasury can be placed in a separate Compte Spécial de Nivellement , which is operated only on BEAC's order.

In practice, the 2025 centralisation rate was higher than the standard quota all year. BEAC's auditors report a low of 59.84% and a high of 73.25%. At 31 December 2025, the principal Operations Account balance was FCFA 3.648797 trillion; including accrued interest receivable, the reported total was FCFA 3.669206 trillion.

These balances are recorded as BEAC assets. The 2025 audit also shows BEAC managing convertible-currency reserves outside the Operations Account, under investment rules set within the Bank's governance framework. So “France owns the reserves” is not supported by the accounting or the statutes.

The assets are remunerated. BEAC states that the Operations Account is linked to the ECB marginal lending facility rate, while the Special Leveling Account is linked to the ECB main-refinancing rate. The ECB rates effective 16 September 2026 are 2.90% and 2.65% respectively. For the 2025 financial year, BEAC recorded FCFA 110.64 billion in credited interest across the two accounts.

Why older figures can mislead. The French Treasury explainer still displays 0.25% and 0% as rates “since 16 March 2016.” That page was published in 2021 and those are historical ECB rates, not the current 2026 rates. This article uses BEAC's audited remuneration formula and the ECB's current rate table instead.

A different question is whether these deposits matter to French public financing. A French National Assembly report calls Treasury-correspondent deposits “une ressource de financement importante pour l'État.” The impact study cited €128.4bn; the state's year-end accounts show €126.8bn at 31 December 2019. Of that, foreign governments and institutions held €15.5bn, including €15.4bn from African central banks.

An asset can remain owed to BEAC while also forming part of the French Treasury's cash resources. Ownership, custody, contractual constraints and Treasury financing are related questions, not interchangeable ones.

What the guarantee is worth, and what it buys

The French Treasury describes reserve centralisation as the counterpart of the unlimited convertibility guarantee because the guarantor needs to monitor the reserves and the risk that the guarantee could be called. BEAC's 2025 audit likewise says the 1972 cooperation is founded on France's unlimited guarantee and the deposit with the French Treasury of all or part of member states' foreign-exchange reserves.

That is the official rationale. The same cooperation framework also provides for French participation in BEAC governance. The documents therefore establish a direct institutional link among the guarantee, the reserve architecture and French participation; they do not establish that France alone runs BEAC.

The reserves are an asset. The arrangement around them is a relationship.

The policy question is whether that relationship still delivers benefits worth its constraints — and whether the region could obtain similar stability under a different architecture. That is a question for the member states and their citizens, not a fact the documents can decide on their behalf.

What does the euro peg provide — and constrain?

The current parity is €1 = 655.957 CFA francs. While that parity holds, it reduces uncertainty about the number of CFA francs needed for a euro-priced payment. France provides a convertibility guarantee under the cooperation framework.

This does not fix the CFA franc’s value against the US dollar. Nor does it freeze food prices, prevent global commodity shocks or make devaluation impossible. A stable exchange-rate quotation and stable household purchasing power are related but different things.

Defending an exchange-rate anchor and maintaining reserves constrain monetary choices. But BEAC does not mechanically reproduce every European Central Bank decision. In its March 2025 CEMAC report, the IMF recommended maintaining a tightening bias despite ECB easing; the report also records BEAC’s view that imperfect capital mobility limits the influence of the interest-rate differential.

That distinction matters. Cameroon lacks a national interest-rate lever, yet the regional central bank retains policy judgment. The argument should concern how that judgment serves the region, not assume that every rate announcement is an instruction from Europe.

Sovereignty also means access to credit

A currency debate becomes tangible when firms cannot finance equipment or farmers cannot obtain suitable working capital. An IMF study published in 2026, Unlocking Growth in Cameroon: Easing Financial Sector Constraints and Closing Infrastructure Gaps , documents the scale of the problem.

The ratio of private-sector credit to GDP in Cameroon fell from 26.4% in 1990 to 14.1% in 2023. In 2015 it stood at 14.2%, roughly one third of the approximately 41.5% average the paper gives for other low-income Sub-Saharan African countries.

26.4% in 1990. 14.1% in 2023. That is the direction of travel.

The maturity structure is also restrictive for long-lived investment. The IMF finds that about 90% of total credit is short-term lending of less than two years; medium-term credit of two to ten years accounts for 8%, and long-term credit above ten years for 2%. Long-lived equipment and expansion projects are difficult to finance when most available credit matures in under two years.

The same IMF analysis points to high intermediation costs, weak borrower information, loan-quality problems and heavy government exposure in bank balance sheets. The evidence supports a serious credit-allocation problem; it does not establish that the euro peg alone causes it.

The giant with two seats

Economic weight and governance design are different things. The French Treasury estimates Cameroon's nominal GDP at €52.5 billion in 2025 and more than 44% of CEMAC GDP. Cameroon is therefore the union's largest economy by this measure.

BEAC's Board, however, is not weighted by GDP: each of the six member states has two administrators, and France also has two designated positions under the cooperation framework. On the Monetary Policy Committee there are likewise two members per member state plus two for France, but BEAC expressly says CPM members do not represent their states and may not take instructions from them.

The defensible point is institutional, not rhetorical: Cameroon carries the largest economic weight in CEMAC, while the regional governance system gives equal national representation among the six member states and also reserves formal positions for France. Whether that design should change is a policy judgment, not a fact determined by GDP alone.

1994: a severe shock, with precise arithmetic

The date requires a distinction. The political decision to change the parity was reached on 11 January 1994; IMF sources describe the new exchange rate as effective 12 January 1994. The parity moved from 50 to 100 CFA francs per French franc — a devaluation of 50% in foreign-currency terms.

A fixed invoice of 100 French francs therefore required 10,000 CFA francs instead of 5,000, before taxes, margins or other pricing changes. That arithmetic explains why import-dependent households and firms were exposed.

It does not mean every retail price doubled. IMF reporting put 1994 average inflation at about 38% across the Central African countries, while World Bank data record Cameroon's 1994 consumer-price inflation at about 35.1%.

The historical lesson is narrower: a fixed parity can be changed. Stability under a peg does not mean the parity is legally or economically immutable.

Central Africa and West Africa: two CFA arrangements

The Central African XAF and West African XOF are separate currencies issued by separate central banks. They share the same euro parity, but the institutional arrangements have diverged.

On 21 December 2019, UEMOA leaders announced an agreement with France that provided for ending the Operations Account and regular French participation in BCEAO governance while retaining the fixed euro parity and France's convertibility guarantee.

The Banque de France now states the outcome plainly: reserve centralisation with the French Treasury ended, the Operations Account was closed, and France withdrew from BCEAO's regular governing bodies. The same Banque de France page says cooperation with CEMAC remains unchanged and France continues to participate in governance there.

Same parity, different institutional arrangements

The French Senate records a residual crisis provision in the West African agreement: if there is a risk that France's guarantee will be called, France may exceptionally designate a representative with a deliberative vote. Ending regular representation therefore did not eliminate every French role.

The relevant lesson for Central Africa is factual: reserve and governance rules can be renegotiated without automatically abandoning a fixed euro parity. West Africa changed those rules; CEMAC has not made the same changes.

Follow export earnings as well as the Treasury account

Oil, gas and mining bring another dimension to the reserve debate: whether export earnings return to the regional banking system at all. On 23 April 2026 BEAC announced Instruction n°001/GR/2026, signed at Yaoundé by Governor Yvon Sana Bangui, raising the repatriation requirement for the export receipts of extractive companies — hydrocarbons, mining and similar activities — on a staged and, in the bank’s word, predictable calendar:

• 35% — the rate in force at the time of the notice
• 50% — from 1 January 2027
• 70% — from 1 January 2028

BEAC states the purpose directly: to strengthen the effect of export receipts on its foreign-exchange reserves while preserving a predictable regulatory path for the companies concerned. National Directors were instructed to notify both the extractive companies and the credit institutions in their territories.

The same notice excludes sums allocated to end-of-life site-rehabilitation funds from that obligation. Money set aside to restore an oil or mining site should therefore not be casually combined with export receipts under one rule. The IMF’s 2025 regional report documents separate negotiations over escrow arrangements for those restoration funds.

This article does not repeat an exact offshore rehabilitation-fund total, or Cameroon’s alleged share of “positive reserves,” because no dated primary table establishing those measures could be found. Unverified precision would weaken the investigation.

The public-interest question remains: how can the region secure external resources while honouring specific contracts, environmental obligations and credible safeguards over the funds?

Pouemi’s warning, from inside Cameroon

The episode also returns to the Cameroonian economist Joseph Tchundjang Pouemi and his 1980 book Monnaie, servitude et liberté: la répression monétaire de l'Afrique.

The bibliographic record verifies the author, title and publication. This article uses Pouemi as a historical lens on monetary sovereignty and credit repression, but it does not attribute a detailed proposition or quotation to him unless that language has been verified directly in the source.

The modern empirical question can be tested without putting words in Pouemi's mouth: who can obtain productive finance, on what terms, and under what institutional rules?

Would a digital CFA change who holds power?

Official materials describe study and preparation, not launch. GABAC, CEMAC’s own anti-money-laundering body, reports that from 23 to 27 February 2026, BEAC and the IMF held a strategic seminar in Yaoundé on central bank digital currency, including “ l’examen des perspectives d’une future monnaie numérique de Banque Centrale dans la sous-région. ” That is evidence of policy work. It is not proof that a digital CFA has been issued.

Mobile money, a bank deposit and a central bank digital currency are three different instruments. A digital form of central-bank money could change how payments work. It would not, by itself, amend the treaties or determine who sets monetary policy.

A necessary correction. The episode’s phrase “one-to-one with the euro” is incorrect. The CFA parity is 655.957 per euro. A hypothetical one-for-one exchange between a digital CFA unit and a cash CFA unit would be an entirely different relationship, and the two should not be confused.

What would a credible reform require?

Three different reforms should be separated because they carry different legal and economic consequences:

• Reforming governance inside a shared currency — seats, reserve rules and accountability.
• Changing the exchange-rate anchor — retaining the union but altering the peg or exchange-rate regime.
• Introducing a separate national currency — leaving the shared monetary union.

West Africa's post-2019 reform demonstrates that governance and reserve arrangements can change while a fixed euro parity and French guarantee remain. It does not tell us how a unilateral Cameroonian exit would work.

The 1972 cooperation framework contains a route for denunciation followed by negotiations over the necessary arrangements. A legal exit clause is not a complete transition plan.

Any serious transition proposal would still need to answer practical questions familiar from IMF work on exchange-rate regime changes:

• How would existing savings, contracts and payment obligations be converted?
• How would foreign-currency debts be serviced?
• What would anchor inflation after a change in the existing peg?
• How would banks manage exchange-rate risk on their balance sheets?
• What reserves and institutional credibility would stand behind the new arrangement?

Mali is a useful historical precedent, but it should be stated without turning history into a prediction. The French Treasury's chronology records that Mali left the franc zone in 1962 to issue its own currency and returned in 1984. That establishes that exit and later re-entry are possible; it does not establish what would happen in Cameroon.

Monetary autonomy creates policy choices. Institutions and transition design shape what those choices achieve.

Who gets to decide what money is allowed to do?

The four questions

Frequently asked questions

Clarifications and corrections to the episode

This is a researched companion article, not a verbatim transcript. The recordings are unchanged. Where the written research refines or corrects the spoken episode, the differences are stated openly:

Sources and verification

Primary and official sources are preferred. Links below were rechecked on 22 September 2026. Where a source states an institutional position or policy judgment rather than a neutral fact, the article identifies it as such.

How this investigation was done

Institutional claims are sourced to the institution's own published material wherever possible: BEAC for governance, reserves and the 2026 extractive instruction; the French Treasury and Banque de France for France's stated role and the cooperation framework; CEMAC and BCEAO for regional decisions; the ECB for current euro-area policy rates; the IMF and World Bank for economic data; and French parliamentary records for legislation and Treasury-account descriptions.

The strongest correction in this audit came from BEAC's 2025 special report on the Operations Account. It supplies details that earlier drafts treated as unavailable: the 50% standard quota with a 40% permitted floor, the FCFA 3.669tn year-end total including accrued interest, the 59.84%–73.25% centralisation range in 2025, and FCFA 110.64bn of credited interest. Those primary-source figures now replace older shorthand.

Claims still omitted for lack of a dated primary source include a single current total for offshore site-rehabilitation funds and any quotation attributed to Pouemi that was not read directly. Where the article makes an interpretation rather than states a documentable fact, it says so. Last reviewed 22 September 2026.

Evidence first. Conclusions last. — The World’s Mayor, reporting from Cameroon